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Poor video quality with fglrx 8.41.7

OK, I just bought a new video card a few days ago, a Gigabyte 2600XT. After a some work I managed to get fglrx 8.41.7 working. 3D's working fine, but the video is really poor quality, it looks kinda blocky. It a huge step backwards from my old nVidia 6200.

And that's when it's working properly. Sometimes when I'm playing a video in Kaffeine the image will be completely messed up, and often it will crash the X server.

I have the Xv overlay enabled (and OpenGL disabled). I don't know what else it could be.

Is this normal for the driver? And if so will it be fixed in future releases?

Does video work any better with the radeonhd driver? I've tried to get it running but it says it can't find a modeline.

I just tried adding TexturedVideo "on". No change. The log says it's enabled.

Thanks for your help. I don't know, maybe it'll be fixed in the next version, but until then I'll just use my 6200. I can swap the cards when I want to boot into windows and play a game. It's not too often, I should be studying anyway

I have the Xv overlay enabled (and OpenGL disabled). I don't know what else it could be.

I have noticed that the first time you run the catalyst control center in linux to make changes (usually I think people use it to force AA or AF settings) and close it, catalyst then writes out those settings into a file - along with the built-in defaults for any other settings you have not changed.

The problem is, there is a bug in the way it handles the configuration of XVideo. The proprietary ATI drivers on Linux use settings in the Xorg configuration file to determine how to setup their XVideo engine (which I am certain most people are aware of); however they also use the catalyst control's settings in /etc/ati/ to enable/disable XVideo!!!

My Linux box is not around right now, but if IIRC the name of the file you need to edit begins with "a" - and is the only file beginning with the lowercase letter "a" - and it resides in /etc/ati.

You need to edit that file and change the XVideo value to be ON, because it defaults to OFF. It doesn't matter how you setup the Xorg config file, the catalyst control will always write the initial (built-in) value of XVideo as being disabled in it's own (separate) configuration file!

This is a bug. Why I haven't seen anyone comment on this is astounding. Everyone complains about XVideo support on ATI FGLRX drivers, but I've been unable to find any remarks on this bug.

To be more precise from my observations, the driver checks the Xorg config first and goes through it's setup routine (which you can see in the Xorg log), then second after that is completed sometime later it reads the catalyst control config files; where if it finds the XVideo option in that catalyst control config file to be disabled it then disables the XVideo feature - regardless of your settings in the Xorg config file.

I have an ATI 9800 pro and using the 8.40.x driver I can use either XVideo Overlay or Textured Video. There are downsides to both of them, which I'll state in the following - but first the configuration: xorg.conf has XVideo overlay on, and both Textured Video and OpenGL overlay off, and then the file /etc/ati/a* has XVideo on - this equals to XVideo being enabled.

Further, I don't know why people keep saying the Textured Video option is "the ATI preferred method". It is both slow and very poor quality (only 12-bit color!!!), and the only thing it has going for it right now is that it supports multiple simultaneous accesses/instances (it has more than one port, although I don't recall the exact number at the moment). This XVideo output is labeled as the VIVO interface, which you'll see by querying it using "xvinfo". No my card does not have VIVO - it does have SVideo out, so YMMV dependent upon your card's model.

With Textured Video off, OpenGL Overlay off, and XVideo Overlay enabled (ensuring it doesn't get force-kludged off by catalyst control), the maximum bit depth available is 16-bit. A bit ironic considering the XServer itself does not support 16bpp in the 2D-space or in 3D. It is also much faster than the Textured Video when i.e. moving the video window around on the screen. The problem is it only has one port, so you can only use/access this XVideo output one instance-at-a-time (one window only).

So maybe you'll see why it is that I prefer XVideo and not Textured Video. 16-bit I can handle for general use, but 12-bit is a completely unacceptable atrocity :P

You will noticed dithering artifacts if you watch DVD or x264 or something with good quality - in which case you'll need to abandon XVideo all together on ATI FGLRX and use something else. Most people I read about say they use OpenGL, but I prefer XVIDIX which has much better quality and other benefits. Unfortunately it needs hardware-level access, so it can be a pain to setup/use for some people...

Now I'm not saying all models of ATI cards support the same features in regards to XVideo, but that is what you can expect from a 9xxx R3xx series card. IMO XVideo deserves more attention than Composite or eye-candy garbage ever does. It has more uses than "joe user watches foo.mpg", a small public example would be how XMAME uses XVideo to scale it's output in realtime with practically no performance hit.

I didn't mean to paint such a bleak outlook on it. Thinking about it, seems to me the ATI 2k series is a good long-term investment (opensource drivers); yet it does have some short-term payout (future fglrx drivers).

Not sure what you are doing that requires video output, but if it's watching videos I'd really suggest you take a look at Vidix/XVidix. That's something you can't really use on recent NVidia hardware AFAIK, but should work just fine on recent ATI gear (may need small adjustments). Probably not so much if what you do is video editing though...

BTW you do realize that the 8.41.x driver is the very first to even support the ATI 2k series, right? Anyway it's your stuff you do what you want - I'm just saying

I didn't mean to paint such a bleak outlook on it. Thinking about it, seems to me the ATI 2k series is a good long-term investment (opensource drivers); yet it does have some short-term payout (future fglrx drivers).

Yeah I know it will get better. It's just a little annoying, things are so easy with Nvidia.

Originally Posted by edged

Not sure what you are doing that requires video output, but if it's watching videos I'd really suggest you take a look at Vidix/XVidix.

Yep just watching videos.

Originally Posted by edged

BTW you do realize that the 8.41.x driver is the very first to even support the ATI 2k series, right? Anyway it's your stuff you do what you want - I'm just saying

Ah good to know. I have to admit the 3D works pretty well in this driver, but I'll probably just stick with the 6200 in Linux, at least until the next ATI driver. I've been swapping the cards to play games in Windows so it's not like the 2600XT's doing nothing